Alas, most pieces set pumpkin-flavored goodies up as a paper tiger, only to knock down how aromatic spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, allspice, anise, ginger, mace, vanilla, or cloves are truly responsible for their comforting scents (if you’d like to know a little bit more about the similarities between some of these spices, check out this NBC Learn animation).

So, warm spices aside, I wondered: what does pumpkin smell like, all by itself?

You probably know pumpkin (genus Cucurbita), a gourd with dense orange-yellow flesh and a hard outside rind, for its traditional role in pies. With fibers and sugars similar to those in sweet potatoes, pumpkin finds itself roasted, stewed, or used as a starter starch for a variety of autumn ales.

When I first started digging into the literature to find pumpkins’ native scents, I figured they’d contain mostly 9-carbon alcohols called nonanols - I worked with similar compounds in graduate school, and my colleagues dubbed me “Mr. Pumpkin” for an entire month. Researchers at General Foods Corp. (NY) authored this 1981 American Chemical Society symposium series, indicating that other Cucurbita, like the muskmelon and cucumber, exude high levels of volatile nonane compounds. Did pumpkins play along? To explore further, the scientists extracted and distilled the flavors from both fresh and canned fruit.

Let’s talk about six

For pumpkins, shorter chains apparently rule the day. When you first slice into one, note the clingy, vegetal odor. That’s major aroma constituent cis-3-hexenol, a six-carbon compound also known as ‘leaf alcohol.’ Close chemical cousins n-hexanol and 2-hexenal round out the top 3 smells, according to the authors. Notice a buttery undertone? Diacetyl, the flavor behind movie-theater butter (and the industrial medical condition “popcorn lung”) occurs naturally in pumpkin. So does pyridine, a common laboratory solvent usually associated with lingering fishy smells.

Interestingly, the profile completely changes when we consider pumpkin puree, the canned orange pulp often used as a pie base. Due to heat processing, the flavor palette now includes a malty, burnt note from 2-methyl-butanal, along with much more pyridine odor and furfural, a sugar decomposition product smelling of grain and sawdust. The authors note that “virtually all of the six-carbon aldehydes and alcohols…have been lost.” Canned pumpkin flavor tastes markedly different from the fresh stuff.

Source: Parliment et. al., ACS Symposium Series 1981, (11), p. 129

Does either of these flavor profiles match the “spice” flavoring on that latte? Probably not. In fact, just last month the Boston Business Journal coaxed a flavor chemist into confessing that the vaunted Starbucks pumpkin spice latte likely contained no actual pumpkin flavor. Good luck getting them to admit anything more; fragrance-makers carefully guard their formulations as trade secrets.

Readers, can you smell any “real” pumpkin in the multitude of new pumpkin spice food products? If anyone with a keen nose (or a gas chromatograph) wants to try, I’d be interested to know.

The other day, at a conference in Belgrade, Serbia, we were served a delicious orange-colored soup. Foreigners guessed carrot, squash and other vegetables. As a local, I knew what it was – pumpkin soup, but it had no recognizable pumpkin flavor.

The “pumpkin spice” phenomenon drives me nuts, probably because I’m a joyless curmudgeon who doesn’t want anyone to have any fun ever. It’s just the smell of cinnamon, nutmeg, and the other spices you mention. It could as easily be called “apple pie spice” or “spice bread” or “here are some delicious spices that are often found in sweet things,” but somehow people have latched on to pumpkin as this wholesome fall-ish thing when it doesn’t contain any traces of pumpkin flavor at all.
In response to Bora’s observation, it’s my understanding that the pumpkin in canned pumpkin puree and pumpkin soup is usually butternut squash or a closely related gourd, not the big Halloween pumpkins we think about when we think of pumpkins. (I think those don’t have very much flavor.)